Veteran Sportswriter Shirley Povich

The Povich Family

Even before the assassination of Alexander II, Jews had to bedeliberately injured to avoid conscription in the czar's cruelarmy, where they were forcibly converted to Greek Orthodoxy orshot. It was during this time that one-eyed Simon Povich and histwelve-year-old son, Nathan, left Baltomans, near Kovna,Lithuania, in 1875. He started a family of businessmen andwomen, lawyers, and journalists in Maine. Why Maine? To earn aliving one had to peddle, and the license in Maine was only fiftydollars (half the price of a license in Massachusetts), and theterritory was wide open! Before the turn of the century, peddlers

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could stock up in Boston, take the trolley car to Portland, and fanout into the southern and western portions of the agriculturalstate or elect to travel along the Atlantic coast to Bar Harbor. ThePoviches took the coastal route.

By the time Simon sent for his wife and four daughters, hiswife had died, so a stranger brought the children to Boston.Cousins of Simon helped him raise the children while he peddledwith Nathan, and despite many hardships they learned Englishquickly. The oldest girl, Jennie, married a peddler, Joe Solovich,and each one opened a store in Bath in 1900. Soon after this,her sister Ida married a peddler named Miller, and they alsosettled in Bath.

Nathan liked Bar Harbor. When he was twenty-one years oldhe sent for his cousin, Rosa, in Lithuania and married her as soonas she left the ship in Boston. The first ceremony by the justice ofthe peace was not enough for the seventeen-year-old OrthodoxRosa; Nathan had to be married again by a rabbi in Bangor. By1888 he had opened a furniture store and could support a wife ayear later when he brought Rosa to Bar Harbor. In those days andfor many years afterwards, Bar Harbor was open for threemonths as a resort town for the extremely wealthy people fromthe rest of the world but was practically dead during the rest ofthe year. Ellsworth, a few miles west and sheltered from theocean, was an all-year-round town with a sizable Jewishcommunity and good transportation to Bangor and Portland. Itwas in Ellsworth that Rosa gave birth to Eva, the first of their tenchildren.

One day when Nathan was in Boston on a business trip, theirsecond child, Samuel, aged two, slipped away from Rosa as shespoke to a customer and drowned in a rain puddle in the street.A neighbor told Rosa's grown children (the mother never spokeof this tragedy) how Rosa bravely wrapped the child in a blanketand rode the train to Bangor to give him a Jewish burial.

Rosa had an unusually broad education for a woman of herday. She knew the Talmud and Torah as well as the men did, butin addition she was secretly tutored in Russian, Lithuanian,mathematics, and literature in Europe. In Bar Harbor she had atutor, Mrs. Martha Simson, who became a devoted friend.

Rosa's children remember that she was known as theprettiest woman in Bar Harbor. She kept a kosher home with thehelp of itinerant slaughterers and the meat merchants in Bangor.

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Although the family was very friendly with the neighbors, none ofthe children (Eva, Goldie, Celia, Morris, Abe, Jay, Shirley, Doris,and Bernard) was allowed to eat outside their home. After a fewyears the family moved to Boston, where it would be easier tokeep a kosher home, but Nathan and Rosa could not competewith Filene's department store. Customers came when Filene'sclosed and expected to beat prices down. This finally drove thefamily back to Bar Harbor.

Meanwhile, Simon made a good living buying and selling realestate in Bath. In 1914 Bath was a boom town with five ship-building plants and more people looking for homes than the coastcould supply. He and Jennie persuaded Nathan and Rosa to moveto Bath. Simon gave them a lot to build a house on, and they feltlucky. Many other people were sleeping under porches and onthe muddy streets. Nathan opened a furniture store that also soldnotions like collar buttons until World War II ended. Theyprospered. Everybody in the family worked in the store exceptEva, who had married her second cousin Morris.

Nathan bought a huge white house on the Kennebec Riversoon after the family came to Bath, and it is this porch-encircledhouse that is still a summer home for the visiting children andgrandchildren. On the wide stairway, the wall supports large ovalportraits of Nathan, Rosa, and their nine children. It is the customof the grandchildren and great-grandchildren to greet each picturein the morning and to bid them all "good night" when they retire.

Although many in the community were skeptical, the YMCAoffered the use of a room if Jewish services could be held early onFriday evenings and on holidays to free the room for otheractivities afterwards. After holidays were observed in the Hall ofEagles, the Severt Building, the Red Men's Building, and in a loftover the Solovich store, the wives formed a Hebrew LadiesSociety to raise funds for a synagogue. The first meeting was heldin Harry Aaronson's tailor shop. Twenty-six ladies—Rosa Povich;her daughter, Eva; the mesdames Erik Aaronson, Bloom, Brown,Cohen, Goldstein, Greenblum, Isaacson, Petlock, Shanblom,Savage, Greenblatt, I. Singer, J. Solovich; more Poviches; and D.Rosen from Brunswick—elected Mrs. Nathan Povich presidentand Eva secretary. They raffled off an embroidered pillow cover(made by Mrs. Povich), held parties, and donated funds. Theyounger children, Doris and her brother Shirley, carried thedishes home from the fundraisers. Meanwhile the men argued

about the size and shape of the building and prayed early eachmorning in groups of at least ten, a minyan. In the Povich home,five boys and the father made a good start on a minyan. The boyswould meet the six o'clock ferry from Boston and invite any menwho "looked" like a Jew to join them. Another source was the manwho came to the store and asked, "Vos macht a Yid?" This wasinterpreted to mean, "Can a Jew make a living here?"

The architect, Mr. Tripp, suggested they should have about$2,000 to start. Harry Cohen finally collected $2,400 by appealingto non-Jews like Reuben Baxter (who later became governor),who gave the largest contribution, $200. Every Sunday three menwould go to adjacent towns to solicit funds. Mr. Gediman wouldentertain with his guitar, Maria Petlock would sing, and thechildren performed plays at the monthly fund raisers.

Finally, a promissory note for $3,300 at 6 percent interestwas signed, and the forty-two members, led by Simon Povich(who gave $52), were ready to begin. Nathan, impatient with allthe conflicting ideas presented to the architect, went ahead andhired a contractor to build. On January 29, 1922, on a sunnyafternoon, 250 people gathered for the dedication of thesynagogue since the first floor was finished and under roof.Nathan Povich carried the Torah scroll, while Nathan Singercarried the prayer book. They were followed by the American flagand women carrying lighted candles. Morris Cohen, the firstcantor, sang Psalm 30. Three rabbis spoke, including the firstrabbi of the congregation, Charles Arek. Everybody sang Hatikva,the Israeli national anthem, and the Star Spangled Banner. Thewood stove in the corner gave enough heat to make this servicea promising beginning.

Bath could not afford a full-time rabbi. By 1927, however, thesynagogue could be recognized as the "Jewish Church" by theGentiles because the second floor was finished. On September 23,1934, the mortgage was burned, the Ner Tamid (the ever-burninglamp) glowed, and a plaque naming the founders was installed.But the depression was too severe for twenty-six families, wholeft for other states. After the Depression (1929-1945) a pulpitlessrabbi would be invited for the High Holy Days. Now the lovelylittle building is used on High Holy Days and occasionally duringthe rest of the year.

A non-Jew, George Davenport, who owned a hotel in Boston,left a legacy that helps to maintain all religious buildings in Bath.

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Of him it was said, "He lived like a fool but died like a gentleman."Since 1925 each religious group in Bath gets $1,500 per year forrepairs, and needy students are granted scholarships.

Among the Jews, education was paramount in Europe and inAmerica. While non-Jews dropped out of high school, Jewishboys went on to college. The Smith family produced two doctors;the Levines produced three dentists; the Poviches producedmany lawyers and an internationally famous sportswriter, ShirleyPovich. Nathan Povich would bring tutors from Boston to preparehis sons for bar mitzvah, but these immigrants learned moreEnglish than the boys learned Hebrew.

As Shirley looks back on his boyhood in Maine, he says hedid not mind the cold. The children looked forward to winter asthe time to skate, tramp through hip-high snow, gather firewood,and help in the furniture store. Early in the twentieth century,stoves were a major item of every room in the house. The fivePovich boys became experts in assembling and installing thestoves their father bought and sold. They learned to fit pipes intochimneys, the proper use of nuts and bolts, and the differencesbetween kitchen and living room stoves. After 1916 winters werespent in Bath, but the family moved back to Bar Harbor everysummer, when business was brisk due to the tourists andsummer resident millionaires.

Famous people like the financier philanthropist Jacob H.Schiff, who had a summer home in Bar Harbor, were frequentvisitors in Nathan's home. He had Horatio Alger, a strugglingyoung writer (who later wrote about boys who succeededdespite great odds), as a resident tutor for his children. Non-Jewswho were customers became friends.

When Shirley caddied and accepted Ed B. McLean's(publisher of the Washington Post) offer of employment, he wasonly sixteen years old. His sisters Celia and Goldie and his brothersAbe and Jay were in Washington. He enrolled in the GeorgetownUniversity Law School but transferred to the liberal arts program ayear and a half later, working at the Washington Post all this time.When he became sports editor, he left college and never returnedto earn a degree. He grew up in a sports-minded family. Even hisfather watched football and baseball games. He credits the friendlysupport of the staff of the Washington Post, as well as his own hardwork, for his success. He was awarded many honors during hiscareer including the Grantland Rice Prize and Headliners, as well aselection to the Baseball Hall of Fame. His writing reflected his warm

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understanding of the players and the coaches. No one couldaccuse him of cruel, unwarranted attacks for the sake of personaladvancement. He respected the need of the players for privacy andtime to unwind after a game.

Shirley served as a war correspondent with the U.S. Marinesin Iwo Jima and Okinawa during World War II. He too carried agun, for as he says, the bombs dropped on everybody. Hemarried Ethyl Friedman, a native of Washington. They have threechildren—David, an attorney; Lynn, a former assistant editor ofU.S. News and World Report, and Maury, a television reporter inPhiladelphia who is married to Connie Chung. For many winters,Nathan and Rosa lived in Washington, and after Nathan died in1931, Rosa accompanied Shirley and his family to Florida, whereShirley covered spring training of the baseball teams. Shirleycontinued to be faithful to his Jewish heritage and prayed onJewish holidays in Japan, Mexico, Germany, Cuba, Italy, andEngland while he covered stories for the Washington Post.

Nathan and Rosa brought teachers into their home to livewith the family. These teachers would live in the Povich home forsix months at a time. The home was filled with religious discussionand ceremonies—no formal instruction was required to make thechildren feel Jewish.

The parents were passionately religious. Abe was sent toPortland to attend Hebrew School. Bernard, the youngest, was nottoo impressed with the festivities following his own bar mitzvahceremony—he slipped out and went to the movies.

While the family lived in Bar Harbor, Shirley caddied for Ed B.McLean, owner of the Washington Post. When he was asked to jointhe McLeans on their private railroad coach to Washington onYom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, Shirley's mother forbadehim to go. Nevertheless, Mr. McLean invited him to join the staffof the newspaper where he became sports editor at age twenty. Heworked for the Post for fifty-two years and still writes specialcolumns. Celia and Goldie worked in the Department ofCommerce and later in the U.S. Coast Guard. Morris was killed inan auto accident in 1936. Abe and Bernard are lawyers inWashington. Doris, a graduate of Emerson College, is a happygrandmother in Silver Spring, Maryland, who keeps the familyhistory for the enjoyment of all, especially those who find itamazing that a grandmother remembers her grandfather. Evamarried her second cousin, Morris Povich, who had come to Bathin 1905 from Boston.

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Shirley Povich, left, who haa tMm writing about sports for TheWashington Pott since the '20*, receives a hug ana a plaque fromB«w B«ii)ift«, the newspaper'* vice president aMarge, during; theAnti-Defamation League dinner at the Wlllard Inter-Continental Hotel.Povteh, 89, who started as • copyboy In 1922 for $12 a week, washonored with a lifetime achievement award by the league.

Morris Povich in front of his store

Morris Povich

Morris Povich left school when he was fifteen years old to avoidmilitary service for the czar. He knew Hebrew and Russian onlybut he made his way through Germany to England. His parents,bakers for the Russian soldiers, were quite poor. The eight dollarship ticket was sent to him from America, and Morris repaid theloan with a ten dollar bill. How difficult it was to save ten dollarsfrom a job hauling bushels of coal for two dollars a week! His onlypossession was his siddur (prayer book.) He lived with SimonPovich, his cousin from Lithuania. From coal he progressed toselling writing paper at twenty-five cents a pound on the road.Later he peddled clothes and stockings. Morris had learned a fewwords of English on the ship, but by the time he opened hisclothing store in Bath in 1910, he was fluent in English. He marriedEva Povich in the kindergarten classroom in Bar Harbor in 1914.He encountered no anti-Semitism in his travels—even inWaterville and Oakland where others had warned him of difficulty.

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When Eva died after their two children, Don and Albert, wereadults, he married Eva's sister, Goldie, who had returned fromWashington, D.C.

Despite his asthma (he spent a long time in the TogusSanitarium early in his marriage), Morris served as alderman andwas the first Jew elected to the Bath City Council. He was a bankofficer in three banks and gave time and money to support theCity Poor Farm, even though no Jews were in need of its services.As the first Jew to be admitted to the local Masons, Odd Fellows,Knights of Pythias, and Elks, he believed that "a person has tomake himself very attractive to Gentiles." As a conservativeRepublican, he fit into the prosperous community easily.

He was also a good friend of John Gary, the president of BathSavings Bank, with whom he would discuss articles in the WallStreet Journal. Indeed, Mr. Gary, a graduate of Boston UniversityLaw, advised Povich's son Albert to go to Georgetown Law School,where he obtained his law degree. The Povich family admired Mr.Cary's mother, who scrubbed floors to send him to college at atime when education was not a priority among non-Jews.

Albert remembers it was very difficult to keep a kosherhome. The itinerant shochet (ritual slaughterer) would usenewspaper for sleeve covers splattered in chicken blood. Hefound these men repulsive and could not understand why theywere necessary.

Donald expanded his father's clothing business to found astore in Damariscotta and another in Wiscasset.

Morris was also a founder of the Bath Israel Synagogue withNathan and Simon Povich; B. Gediman and his sons, Arthur andHenry; Louis and Morris Petlock; Abram Miller; Harry Brown; theSolomon Greenblatt family; and the Isaac Mikelsky family. In 1972the fiftieth anniversary of the congregation was celebrated, eventhough meetings to start a synagogue were started in 1919 andservices had been part of the way of life in the Jewish homes.

For amusement in the summer the families would picnic onThomas Point. In the winter they would visit each other after thestores closed; the cars were stored during the winter months.

According to Doris Povich Mensh, the fountainhead of familylore, Bath in the 1880s was a Gentile city—staid and solid Yankee,but by 1900 a dozen Jewish families had settled in Bath. The 1914ship-building boom attracted more than thirty Jewish familiesand many French Canadian families.

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What was their idea of a Yankee? Yankees were born in NewEngland, preferably Maine, and spoke like a Yankee—notboisterously. They were taciturn, paid cash for a house, did notbelieve in credit and therefore had no mortgage. They followedtheir minister's preaching to the letter. They were narrow-mindedand very strict with their children.

The Povich family lived in the same house most of theirlives, just as their neighbors did, so that a close friendlyrelationship developed between the French Canadian Catholics,the High Episcopalians, and the Jews who remained in Bath. Eventhose children who settled elsewhere visited former neighborswhen they came back in the summer.

Don and his wife, Janet, visited Morris often, but Albert andhis family lived in Bethesda, Maryland and came to Maine onlyonce a year. Morris was never lonely; he read the Wall StreetJournal.

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Ida Povich Dondis

Ida Povich Dondis

Rosa Povich's brothers, Abraham and Michael, were tanners inEurope, but when they came to Maine at the end of the nineteenthcentury, tanning was pass£, and peddling was a good way to earna living if you could not speak English and had no capital. Michaelwas under five feet tall, but his sense of humor compensated forthat. His ingenuity led him from the junk business to a grocery

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store. He, too, married his cousin from Baltomans, Kovna, in NewYork and came to Ellsworth to join his Povich sister and cousins.His son, Shirley, operated the store in Ellsworth and practiced lawas well.

Michael's daughter, Ida Dondis, inherited his sense of humorand ingenuity. How else could she have served as president of herchapter of Hadassah for fifty years? Two or three women fromeach town around Rockland, like Belfast and Camden, wouldmeet in her home or at the Whitehall Inn. The Samoset Hotel wasreputed to be anti-Semitic until recent years; as president of theRockland Garden Club, Ida refused to have luncheons there.

Ida and her husband, Joe Dondis, weathered the hard timesafter World War I by buying fish on the islands off the coast andselling it on the mainland. Sometimes they made a little money,but there were times when they recouped only twenty-five centson the dollar. In 1920 they went into the theater business, rentingfilms and showing them in the old building near the ThorndikeHotel in Rockland.

Shortly after they started, the whole block of buildingsburned down, and Ida and Joe bought the land for $7,500. Theybuilt a theater and two stores. They had put a $10,000 organ intothe theater, but in the 30s, First National-Paramount had amonopoly on films, and they could not rent films. They even senta letter and money to William Howard Taft to fight the monopoly,but they never heard from him. "Not too many honest thingshappened then," Ida remembered.

For some reason the film of the Dempsey-Tunney fight wasbarred in Maine, but in desperation Ida's husband obtained it andshowed it at the Bijou theater in Bangor. With two partners, hetoured the state and took in $38,000. By the time they reachedRumford, they were arrested on a complaint filed by Paramount.The case was settled when Dondis agreed to accept only half ofthe profit in nine theaters including those in Calais, St. Stephen,and Skowhegan. Senator Margaret Chase Smith's husband waspresident of the bank in Skowhegan in 1930 when Dondisapproached him for a loan to build a theater there. Mr. Smith,who was feuding with the owner of a theater there, was only toohappy to lend him the money to squeeze his enemy out ofbusiness. Dondis died in 1940, but his widow remained veryactive in the theater in Rockland, even remodeling it when shewas eighty years old.

Ida graduated from Ellsworth High School and Castine

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Normal School. She taught in Ellsworth before her marriage in1914. Her husband had a Coca-Cola franchise before and duringWorld War I. After the war, no one wanted Coca-Cola; he gave it upand, of course, regretted it later. He sold rum during Prohibition;Ida sold hot dogs. It took wits and daring to survive.

She remembered Bar Harbor before 1920, when cars wereallowed in. The very rich, including the Jacob H. Schiff and JosephPulitzer families, were frequent visitors in Nathan Povich'sfurniture store. She sat on Schiff's lap as a child and later typed forhim. She enjoyed waiting on the rich in her aunt's rooming houseduring the summer. She remembered the wealthy ladies in theirlong white gloves and feathered hats greeting the pedestriansfrom their carriages. The horse shows and dog shows broughtpeople like Mrs. Ed McLean (owner of the Hope Diamond) in longwhite gowns accompanied by liveried coachmen. "Gentility wasalso the hallmark of wealth. After the cars came the loud, uncouthrich, and the whole scene changed."

Ida's mother sold picture frames and notions while herfather peddled. They were so poor that her mother offered toleave her wedding ring for the five dollar postage due on a box offrames, but the Railway Express agent trusted her to pay whenshe could. There were ten Jewish families and a synagogue inEllsworth when Mike (Ida's father) opened a fruit store there. Hebelonged to the Masons and Odd Fellows. Ida remembers howpopular he was for his witticisms; his incessant smoking finallydid him in. When he was told by a policeman in Bangor that hewas going the wrong way on a one-way street, he replied, "I'mgoing only one way!"

He used to buy junk from the manager of the Black Estate, amuseum with pretensions. One day he drove his team up to thefront door. The manager was horrified by the bedraggled horseand told Mike never to come to the front again, but when he waschided, he replied, "T'aint the same horse." His family adoredMike, and the children remember a happy childhood.

Ida remembers how proudly Anna Mae Dutton showed offher Jewish pupils, even when they said, "To the shitty I will gonoble prince."

Ida worked as a waitress with Edna St. Vincent Millay's sisterat the Whitehall Inn. A wealthy woman sent Edna to school. Idacontributed the beautiful memorial to the poet on Mt. Batty,

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where anyone can see "Six mountains in a wood" and "FiveIslands in a bay." In Ida's lovely home, a picture of the memorialhangs alongside beautiful landscapes painted by Ida herself, aswell as paintings created by her daughter-in-law, a dean at BostonUniversity, who is married to Ida's son Harold, a lawyer. Her otherson, Meredith, is in the furniture business in Rockland. Hisdaughter, Jo, a Wellesley graduate, is a television reporter; hersister is in law school.

Ida was a co-worker in the office of the ship-building firmwhere the tall, beautiful Louise Berliawsky was employed. Forcoaching her Latin while she was in high school, Louise gave Idatwo of her sculptures. Ida remembers when Charles Nevelson, thecorporation lawyer, came to the office and met Louise. He was soimpressed with the eighteen-year-old clerk, he sent his Oxfordgraduate brother to see her. Although he was fifteen years olderthan Louise, he was determined to marry her. When thisdistinguished gentleman came to call on her parents, Mrs.Berliawsky's first question, "Are you Jewish?", did not discouragehim. She invited him to have a glass of tea in the parlor but toldhim "You are too old." He declared, "I'll love your gorgeousdaughter and send her to Pratt Institute for six months to see ifshe has talent." Louise married him, went to art school, had ason, and divorced Charles Nevelson eighteen months later. Idaloved Nevelson's sculpture and admired her as a person, eventhough she says, "Louise was a bitch—she'd as soon insult you aslook at you." Louise persevered through years of poverty in NewYork; without her brother's help she might have had to give up.She came back to Rockland as an international artist. Her specialroom at the Samoset Hotel, the Louise Nevelson, contains someof her work, and the Farnsworth Museum spent $50,000 to bringseveral samples of her sculpture to exhibit in 1979.

Ida remembered the Dave Rubenstein family that is nowgone from Maine. Dave couldn't read or write, but he knew avaluable antique when he saw one. The Biddies, Fords, andRockefellers were his customers. His wife was his bookkeeper.When he died, it took four days to auction off his furniture, silver,and china. Under the rug in the front of the store, checks for asmuch as $2,200 were found. Two of his three surviving daughtershad tried to move some of his possessions the night before theauction, but government agents caught up with the vans as theywere leaving.

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Ida identified Isador Gordon, whose memorial stands in thegarden of the Farnsworth Museum, as a wheeler-dealer in the fishbusiness. His family is scattered too. Saul Schweicher was one ofseveral sardine canners. Rockland still has a cannery, but theowner may not be a practicing Jew.

Ida's father and her husband bought an abandoned churchand converted it to a synagogue. Although Jews came fromCamden and smaller communities, they could not afford a full-time rabbi. They all pay dues and hire a rabbi from New York forthe High Holy Days. It is still used for memorial services andfunerals. The composer Hugo Weisgall served as cantor.

This community suffered during the depressions before andafter the world wars, but Jews never applied for charity. Theycontributed to drives for general relief and for Jews in need inEurope and Israel, but in Rockland they managed. Of course, thechildren and grandchildren of the early settlers, like theRosenberg orthodontists, moved to Portland, Massachusetts,Washington, D.C., etc., but not because they were unemployed.Most were college graduates, but they sought the companionshipof Jews.

There's a gentleness characteristic of the American Povichfamily known in Yiddish as edelkeit. It is a gentility that seems toenvelop each Povich in attitude and speech.

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